(October 11, 2013 at 11:02 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Actually, its the other way around. You claim that materialism is sufficient to explain all the relevant phenomena, but when it proves unable to do so, you never question the underlying monist paradigm. Either you try to pretend the phenomena is an illusion (like conscious awareness) or claim that someday, maybe a materialistic solution will be found.
Now in one sense you are correct, I cannot see a solution based on a physical monist paradigm, or at least find the proposed solutions unsatisfactory. That alone would not make me adopt a dualist position. As an alternative paradigm, dualism solves many of the problems and better accounts for all phenomena. Thus I think it is a better position and not just the last man standing
Except you haven't accounted for these phenomena with dualsim. You've simply pushed back our ignorance with one giant assumption. You say monism can't account for X. I ask how dualism can account for X, and you say the soul. But you can't elaborate any further. So, while I have to make the assumption that monism can explain everything, you have to make both the assumption that the soul exists, and that it explains everything. Not only have you failed to provide anything with any explanatory power, you have to make more assumptions to do so.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell